The concept of treatment of pain through application of electrical signals to the body is known in the art. One such electrical stimulator that is on the market today is sold by the Empi, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minn. Briefly, the concept of such prior art units for treating pain is to apply an electrical signal across electrodes located on the user's body by applying a first electrode directly on the site of pain on the user and a second electrode between the site of pain and the user's head. The believed principal of operation behind such prior art electrical stimulator units are to provide an interruption of the pain signal from the pain site to the brain. Usually, such units only provide temporary relief to the person suffering from the pain.
Still others have the tester control the level of stimulation to the area where the pain is perceived to emanate from. In other applications the wave forms, the frequencies, and the voltage have been controlled to determine the effectiveness of the treatment.
Generally, there are two major types of pain that patients suffer from, acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is generally pain of short duration, with severe intensity, such as accompanied by surgery or ileitis. Acute pain if left untreated will gradually disappear with no further treatment. Chronic pain on the other hand is pain of a long duration that has defied any type of treatment to eliminate the pain. Most chronic pain is of several months or years of duration. Although with chronic pain the intensity of the pain may vary from time to time the body incapable of healing it self to eliminate the chronic pain. Treatment for chronic pain has generally been ineffective since if the pain responds to a treatment the pain generally reappears in a short time. The present invention is directed toward the treatment of chronic pain in patients who have suffered with chronic pain for many months or years.
The present invention provides a patient responsive treatment for chronic pain that has been found to result in greater long term effectiveness than other methods and to produce pain relief in patients who have not responded to prior electrical stimulation treatment. In the present method of treatment the patient applies an electrical signal having a monophasic wave form across but not on the area of the body where the user perceives the pain for a predetermined length of time which often results in permanent pain relief in the patients. The present invention relies on the patient control of the voltage level of a particular type of electrical signal applied to the appropriate area of the patients body to provide permanent pain relief to the patient. Thus the feedback from the patients body feeling is used directly by the patient to control the level of the electrical signal applied to electrodes. This type of feedback treatment combined with an electrical signal having a monophasic wave form has been found to be generally superior method for the treatment of pain in a patient.